The War of Immensities (64 page)

Why did he
bother? Wagner was wondering, looking at him sideways. They all did
the same thing. Miracles immediately—the impossible takes a little
longer. Harley asked and they tried to deliver, against all
odds.

“Trouble with
the government?” Wagner asked conversationally. He presumed that
Brian would get around to explaining why he had been summoned here
eventually. You just had to be patient with him.

“Not at
all—well, you know how the Japanese are—it’s all bowing and
scraping and exchanging compliments but they need all that ritual
to be polite because underneath they are just as inefficient as any
bureaucracy,” Brian said without the slightest consideration that
it might have been a racist generalisation. “Anyhow, as I
suspected, they were dead keen to get rid of the pilgrims. They’ve
had to guard them day and night to protect them from gangs of
hooligans anyway. Then, when Lorna went on the telly and did her
magic cure routine, they were hooked. Y’know, she even learned her
lines in Japanese. That impressed ‘em.”

“Always was a
smart girl, that Lorna.” Wagner said begrudgingly.

“Too smart for
you and me,” Brian said with a grin.

“What you gotta
ask yourself is, will she be too smart for Harley too?” Wagner said
with a sly grin.

“Yeah, I heard
about that. Now that she’s got to the top, where does she go from
here?”

“Well, one day
she’ll be old and ugly and us guys will stop falling for her
charms,” Wagner laughed.

“Assuming, of
course, that any of us get to be much older and uglier.”

Okay, enough
jocularity. Back to the serious stuff. Brian was so
predictable.

“You don’t
believe, then, that Thyssen has a miracle up his sleeve?”

“Oh no,” Brian
laughed. “I know he does. The problem is, even if it does work,
it’s gonna be bloody nearly impossible to pull off.”

“Tell me about
this miracle,” Wagner said, knowing fully what he was letting
himself in for.

“It has to do
with the Third Law of Thermodynamics.”

“I thought
there were only two.”

“There were.
Well, there are. It’s only me and Harley who reckon there’s a third
one.”

“Refresh my
memory on the first two.”

“The first one
says the universe will remain constant forever. But there’s small
print, which says that what it really means is that the amount of
material, or elementary particles, that make up the universe will
remain the same. What it doesn’t say is that those particles can
change, from matter to energy or vice versa, and that the balance
will not stay the same. There’ll just be the same quantity of them.
Then there’s the second law, which says that eventually all
particles will be converted into matter and there won’t be any left
as energy and the universe will become entirely dead matter. The
Heat Death of the Universe. Entropy.”

“Yeah, right,”
Wagner said. “Got all that.”

“Okay. So, in
very general terms, the stars continually produce Bosons and the
Black Holes continually swallow stars. But every star is slowly
dying, producing less Bosons, while black holes continually grow
larger and more numerous. Every day, there are more Fermions and
less Bosons, and that’s been happening since the Big Bang.”

“So it’s
inevitable.”

“So it seems,
except, there is one exception. Of course, the evidence is slight
and we have only one sample planet to work with, but it seems one
source of Bosons that is continually expanding, and that is
thought.”

“Thought?”

“Yes, well,
call it what you like. Intelligence, sentience, cognisance. But I
prefer to call it just plain thought. You see the neurons firing in
your brain and every other brain are Bosons. Thought, whatever it
is, generates Bosons.”

“So you figure
that one day we’ll grow up to be big enough and nasty enough to
take on black holes?”

“Precisely. Not
soon, of course. But we can assume that wherever there are life
forms and evolution is taking place, Bosons are being generated.
And one day, us and all the billions of other beings from inhabited
planets out there will be so numerous and widespread about the
universe that the effect will be to reverse entropy.”

“Holy Jesus.
We’re failing to save a planet and you’re plotting to save the
universe.”

“Exactly. So
that’s the Third Law of Thermodynamics. Thought runs contrary to
the Second Law and can overcome entropy.”

Wagner,
goggle-eyed, took one more saki than he might earlier have needed.
“Now come on, Brian. Just exactly how much evidence is there to
support this theory?”

“Not a lot.
But, some scientists think there might be something in it somehow.
And we do have absolutely no idea what thought is and how it
functions. This is the best theory going around.”

“And Harley
thinks all this somehow has something to do with the Shastri
Effect?”

“Harley is a
sensible man with a strong scientific reputation to protect and he
is admitting no such thing. But he’s letting me get away with
believing it.”

“Well, I’ll
wait until Harley says so, if you don’t mind.”

“Suit
yourself.”

“Let’s get back
to the subject in hand, shall we?”

“Which subject
was that?”

“About moving
these difficult Japanese.”

“Oh, right. So
you think the fact that Harley plans to move as many pilgrims as
possible into the path of the Brazilian Shastri Event isn’t the
same subject.”

“He’s doing it
because it’ll cure them.”

“I believe he
has another reason.”

“Like
what?”

“Look, it’s a
random universe, right? Except here on Planet Earth where the laws
of physics and maths work for us, despite the fact that they don’t
work in reality. There is only one possible explanation for
that.”

“That, somehow,
we make those laws work.”

“That’s right.
Whenever those random elementary particles fall under the influence
of our collective consciousness, they conform to the rules by which
our minds operate.”

“You’re kidding
me, right?”

“Take it as
serious as you like, mate. But I reckon Harley’s idea is that, down
there in the earth’s core, there’s a chunk of the random universe
on the rampage. And he figures that if he can get enough people,
with linked brains, all directing the same thought toward the
singularity at the moment when it is most vulnerable and closest to
us, we’ll hit it with Bosons and force it to conform.”

“Good God.”

“And how will
he get them all to think the same thing at the same time?”

“Because at
this last instant, they’ll all be feeling exactly the same thing at
exactly the same time. Pain.”

“Carrick, you
are crazy.”

“Yeah, maybe.
Only I reckon I’m slowly becoming crazy in just the same way Harley
is.”

“If all this is
so and Thyssen knows it, why doesn’t he just come out and say
so?”

“Because most
people will react as sceptically as you are now, and right now he
cannot afford to have people not taking him seriously.”

“And you think
that’s his hidden agenda?”

“Yep. I reckon
he figured all that out a long time ago and he’s been working
steadily towards it ever since.”

Wagner groaned.
Did this truly matter? All this shoving populations around like
chess pieces. There was part of him that wanted to believe what
Carrick told him. But the rest of him was bloody determined to keep
the situation earthbound and manageable.

“Okay. So let’s
leave Harley to his fantasies and deal with the problem in front of
us. What about the Brazilian end? How do they feel about copping
all these Japanese immigrants?”

“Not a problem.
They’re all on tourist visas, off to Joe’s El Rancho resorts. All
them tourist dollars. Brazil said fine and dandy.”

“Tourist
resorts?”

“Well, mostly
they’ll actually be building the resort complex when they get
there. But, anyhow, most of them are there already. They went like
lambs, believing their troubles would be over. Of course, there
were all sorts of religious rituals that they had to put themselves
through and a hell of a lot of bureaucratic bullshit, but all that
was just as well because the Japanese kept accurate records on them
and at the end of the day, there were 1467 missing.”

“Missing
how?”

“Missing any
way they could. All the ones that didn’t want to go. Hiding under
their beds, disguising themselves as someone else, or just taking
off to the hills.”

“And we gotta
round up every one of them?”

“That’s right.
Just one gets left behind and the whole scheme turns to shit.”

“Surely, if we
get most of them…?”

“No way. The
random universe isn’t a democracy, Kev. We’re dealing with some
sort of collective consciousness here. So if there’s just one bloke
in a different place to all the rest, no matter how numerous the
rest of them are, the focal point with fall halfway between the one
bloke and the rest. The only way to control the position of the
focal point is to get them all —every last one of them—to the same
place.”

“Shit.”

“So every day,
a few more are converted to the word of Lorna Simmons and turn
themselves in, and there’s an army of riot police out there
rounding up a few dozen each day. There’s down to eight hundred and
something now, but its going too slow.”

“Which is where
I come in, I suppose.”

“Yes, Kev. I’ve
done all I can with my soft touch. Harsher and more direct methods
are required now.”

“How much
co-operation can I expect from the locals?”

“It’ll help if
you can put the frighteners on them a bit. But anyhow, they have to
be found and processed and shipped to Brazil by the 10th of
April.”

“That gives us
a month. And there’ll be another link before then, won’t
there?”

“Yep. But the
Zone will be in Iran, which no one fancied as a good place to
gather pilgrims.”

“Still, it
might have been interesting.”

“I think you’ll
find you have enough on your hands here to keep you amused,
Kev.”

Wagner was
beginning to understand the point of all this. “Do I detect that
you are saying me and not we? I thought I came to help you
out.”

Brian thought
that very funny. “I just wouldn’t be comfortable giving you orders,
Kev. No. You’re in charge here. I’m pissing off.”

“Pissing off
where, exactly?”

“Italy. I’m
going to help Chrissie move the Italian pilgrims to Brazil.”

“Does she need
help?”

“She might. Now
that the Pope has said they can’t go.”

The wine tasted
bitter in her mouth. She knelt before the icons and symbols of a
religion that she no longer believed and Cardinal Luigi Valerno
gave her the sacrament while speaking in Latin, not one word of
which she understood. That had never seemed so appropriate before.
She wasn’t at all sure why she was doing this, carrying out this
pagan ritual for the benefit of a soul that had made its commitment
to another God. But Valerno had insisted.

“It would be
improper for you to leave here, after all that has passed here,
without taking the Holy Sacrament before you go,” he said.

“But it no
longer means anything to me,” Chrissie protested.

“It will mean
much to me, and the sisters here. They would be very disappointed
if they hear that I let you go without our final blessing.”

Anything to get
out of here, she was thinking.

The wine tasted
like poison to her, but she gulped it down and clasped her hands
and bowed her head as if in prayer, and he placed his hand upon her
skull. His hand seemed surprisingly warm and even sweaty. He spoke
more Latin—she felt like a dog trying to comprehend spoken
instructions. But all she was thinking was that in a few moments
she would be able to leave this place, and Valerno, and all he
stood for behind.

He had arrived
in his red robes, full of reverent joy. “His Holiness is concerned
about the Pilgrims, and believes they are in need of a
strengthening of their faith.”

“Their faith
needs no strengthening...”

“But it does,
Christine. A great temptation has been placed before them.”

Chrissie chewed
on her lower lip. In a weird way, she understood exactly what he
was talking about. But she wasn’t about to admit that. “There is no
temptation.”

“Look, I know
Miss Simmons is a friend of yours...”

“A very good
friend, Luigi, and more reliable than most.”

“A woman who
walks in sin, I’m told.”

“That’s the
trouble with you, Luigi. You believe everything you’re told...”

“But she has
made false promises.”

“How do you
know they are false?”

“They
contradict Scripture. What makes you think otherwise?”

“Because Lorna,
unlike certain popes and cardinals, wouldn’t lie.”

“You can’t be
sure...”

“I can be sure.
It’s one of the few things I can still be sure of.”

“But what she
claims is ridiculous,” Valerno spluttered. Plainly he had not
expected this level of resistance.

“It worked. The
result of a properly conducted scientific experiment.”

“But what is
being suggested here is the reversal of a miracle...”

“There was
never any miracle, Luigi. The Shastri Effect was acquired. Now it
can be unacquired.”

“Miraculously
acquired, Chrissie. You told the pilgrims that yourself.”

“I changed my
mind.”

“Which you are
at liberty to do. But you are also implying that God has changed
his mind, which is untenable.”

“Stuff and
nonsense. Read Exodus, Luigi. And Jonah. God changes his mind more
often than you change your knickers.”

“The quotation
of Scripture is not your domain.”